Jack Cohen's Blog about Israel and other daily amusements

A visit to the dentist

I broke a piece of a tooth off while eating a healthful cereal with nuts. Luckily it wasn’t hurting me. Eventually I went to the dentist and the first thing he said, almost before looking at it, was “you’ll need a crown.” I responded “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” but he was obviously not a Shakespearean scholar and he responded, “so you don’t want a crown.”

My second line of defense was, “the problem is that my nose, ears and eyes get jealous if I spend too much on my teeth.” This did not persuade him either, so I fell back on the truth, “it’s too expensive and at my age who needs it.” He looked again more closely and decided that he could give me a filling, a large filling, that would take care of the problem. I settled back into the dentist’s chair feeling smug. But, I should have known better.

After hitting the tooth and digging sharp instruments into it did not produce any pain, he said “you won’t need an injection for this tooth.” I mumbled “Arrgh.” He took a huge device, a clamp that he pressed around my tooth and pushed it down and then tightened it, and when I winced in pain he said, “yes, that can hurt.” He then proceeded to fill the cavity with liquid cement, that he irradiated with UV light in order to make it solidify. When he was finally satisfied, he took the device off and asked how it felt. It felt as though I had a huge mountain in my mouth, but I said “it’s a work of art.”

It only cost me ca. $100 (NIS 380) and caused minimal pain, so it was a bargain. But beware, healthful cereal can be expensive.

2 thoughts on “A visit to the dentist”

Dear Jack:
I think the real moral of your story is that this dentist was about to sell you on an expensive crown, when a filling might have sufficed…
How many other customers has this dentist “over-sold” on unnecessary crowns?